Dimensional Descent

Leonel\'s mind had already been sharp before his breakthroughs, but now he was on a completely different level. Still, even if he hadn\'t had these breakthroughs, the momentum someone needed to gather up to shout so loudly was too obvious.

Leonel had already caught what would happen the moment this individual took a much deeper than usual breath. By the time they actually shouted, they might as well have been nothing more than a jumping clown.

In the past, Leonel didn\'t really care much about kneeling. He had grown up in an Empire that practically deified his grandfather and to him he never really attached any great importance to it. It was what everyone did and it didn\'t have the same weight of stigma attached to it that some parts of history would lead one to believe.

However, after his time in the Camelot Zone, he had grown a distaste for it. If the person you were kneeling to didn\'t have any foul intentions, doing so might still be fine. However, if the  person you were kneeling for wanted to use it for no other purpose than stepping over your head, it was something that could easily infuriate Leonel.

Let alone the fact he wouldn\'t listen to a jumping clown like that one, even if no one had said anything he would never kneel to a person like Mistress Oliidark who clearly had no regard for him.

This little outburst, though, did give Leonel a hint of information, though.

He hadn\'t spent very long in the Oliidark estate, but he had run into several young men who seemed intent on observing him, especially during his hour in the library. These were all young men, all around the same age, and all of which held a certain standard of talent.

It wasn\'t too difficult to guess what they were doing here. It was like Mistress Oliidark had built up her own little army of live-in son-in-laws for her granddaughter to pick and choose from. Such a thing was one part amusing and another part infuriating.

The one who had spoken just now was the only one that Leonel had come across that had a presence similar to or more powerful than the young man that had been by Athrae\'s side that day.

He had already heard talks around of a Sebastian and Slaton many times already. So he assumed that this person was one of the two of them.

Still, Leonel found it funny. These two were supposedly the strongest, and yet they were also the most happy to wag their tails and please. It made Leonel wonder if it was really their talent that made them the strongest, or if it was their boot licking that just gained them far more resources than everyone else.

Of course, while he was insulting them, Leonel thought of another more sinister possibility, and that was that Mistress Oliidark had managed to tighten a much shorter leash on these two precisely because of their talent.

If that was the case, he needed to be wary of such methods.

"Do you all need something?" Leonel asked lightly.

His voice was like a light breeze that whisked away the echoes of Sebastian\'s voice. It was as though the shout itself never happened, but it was precisely this that made things so embarrassing for the latter.

"You…"

Sebastian\'s mouth snapped close the moment Mistress Oliidark raised a hand.

By this point, Leonel\'s lack of respect was grating on her nerves. She might be able to find the amusement in it when it was just the two of them, but when everyone was scrutinizing her like this, it made it ten times more infuriating than it should have been.

"You destroyed all of this?" Mistress Oliidark asked.

"You never provided me with a proper training room, what else could I destroy if not this?"

Rather than becoming more infuriated, Mistress Oliidark only became calmer.

"The expenses for this guest house and the surrounding damage will come directly from your merits. Until you gather enough to pay it back, the house will not give you any resources."

Mistress Oliidark expected Leonel to fly into a rage when he heard this, giving her an opportunity to suppress him further. But all she received in return was a curled lip.

Merits? Resources? After he had been through their library once, he already had all the information he needed. In fact, it wasn\'t just information about this that he had gathered.

After the breakthrough in his mind, Leonel believed that he had thought of a viable method to shatter the barriers of this Zone and catalyze their return home.

Of course, this would require resources that he apparently wouldn\'t be receiving anymore until he met some arbitrary goal he had no doubt Mistress Oliidark would inflate, but it wouldn\'t have been a good idea to gather said resources from this place to begin with. It would have been too suspicious.

The simple fact was that he didn\'t need anything this "house" could give him anymore that he wouldn\'t be able to get himself when they inevitably forced him to go demon hunting again.

In two more weeks, just like he said, he would leave this place.

Leonel\'s derisive smile and silence dug into Mistress Oliidark\'s nerves. However, she could only stare at him deeply before she spoke her next words.

"Everyone to the training field. Now."